March 2013

Little Annie at home in Manhattan, January 2013. Photo by Jeremy
Liebman.

Little Annie Bandez spreads the word about her top websites.
Annie is in The Wire 349
featured in an Invisible Jukebox, tested by Dave Mandl.

Handselecta
Graffiti and tagging are so much a part of the
landscape that I don't think about it anymore than I do trees, for
example: I am glad they are there, unique and beautiful. Christian
Acker's Handselecta delves into not just the various styles and
lines of graffiti, but opens up the honeycomb of their origins,
migrations and language. Like all good living history it is full of
the unexpected, and like all good art, doesn't happen within a
vacuum. Instead, it is enriched by all that surrounds it. Really,
all art is tagging, it's proof that one was there.

Roadside
America
I don' t know if they still release them but when I was a kid,
Ripley's Believe It Or Not would put out an annual
anthology cataloguing all things strange and awesome, eg: a
cemetery in some tiny Eastern European village where all the
headstones were written backwards, or an 80 pound potato shaped
like Abraham Lincoln's profile grown in Bora Bora. Each piece ended
with the tagline scrawled in a bold font "BELIEVE IT OR NOT". Each
of these amazing entries would be illustrated with a line drawn
artist rendition, lest one needed visual proof. When younger, my
sister and I poured over these books, promising to one day see all
these wonders with our own eyes. This site is in the same ilk but
actually informs one how to find the quirky things that exist,
because, well they can. Which to me is not only always magical but
life affirming and God pleasing.

Scared
DestinationsI've yet to
find the ultimate portal for sacred sites online but this is as
good a place as any for a cyber-opium den – for those times one
needs to escape into beautiful minute vignettes of places magical
and mysterious. It's an easy hop click and a jump to go from Machu
Picchu to Cuzco paintings and back via Via Dolorosa and the
witchcraft market in La Paz. I worked for quite a few years in an
incredibly sad place, NYC's Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center
(though sometimes rewarding) and that's when I discovered the
healing powers of daydreaming online. It's important to remember
the world is often a wonderful place, especially while being stuck
somewhere not so wonderful.

On The
WireSteve Barker's
On The Wire (BBC Radio Lancashire). His musical tastes and
knowledge is so vast, open eared and comprehensive. I think his
criteria as to what he plays is that it must be good. There's
nothing obtuse or clever-for-the-sake-of-it. And the man knows his
stuff! Like all great teachers he loves the subject and embraces
the details, and genius is in the details. He should be made a Sir
or a Knight or a Bishop.

Museum Of
International Folk ArtI've not
always been a huge fan of museums. Maybe because of the name, it's
too close to a mausoleum housing old bones, a feeling which some
share. What I love about Santa Fe's Museum of International Folk
Art is that it is so alive, ultra-alive... so alive that it would
take a month to do it justice, and that's just on a surface. If you
get the chance to go there in person it's not to be missed. It's
friendly and layed out for your inner kid-in-the-candy-shop. Indeed
this website is more of a rabbit hole than a portal. It's an
entrance to a whole universe.

Seeking Justice For
Donovan DraytonA website that I've spent
quite a lot of time on this past year – which is four years less
than Donovan Drayton, son of legendary guitar genius Ronny Drayton,
has spent wrongly incarcerated on Rikers Island in New York despite
never being found guilty of any crime. This young man, with grace,
dignity and wisdom way beyond his years is the victim a gross
miscarriage of justice that has stolen five years of his life (from
the age of 19 till 24). It has been hell for his family whose
strength and faith is truly awesome and is being drained
financially by the enormous legal costs to retain legal council.
I've heard of many courtroom antics but the one employed against
Donovan are right up there on the morally reprehensible charts.
Donovan is about to embark on his second trial. This could be your
child, your sibling, your parent, your lover…there are many like
Donovan in the world, read this and get outraged and then get
involved. And yes I'm on a soapbox, a soapbox I'm honored to share
with a whole bunch of amazing people. There's room for everyone, so
step up.

MotherNYCIt's easy in New York,
as with most other cities, to go years without running into people
you love dearly, especially when those cites are fast becoming
figments of the imagination due to the bulldozer of urban renewal.
The business of day to day living with a a career thrown into the
mix – even with the best intentions, life in general is the first
victim of well... having a life. I believe that the Internet plays
a huge part in this malady but it is also a remedy, an avenue in
which to keep a connection. This hub is just such a place. In the
mid to late 90s the amazing nightlife shook what used to be the old
meat packing district (now MEPA oy vey Maria). Chi Chi Valenti and
Johnny Dynell Jon by Kitty Boots and Richard Move were behind the
Jackie Factory in the mid 90s and out of which sprouted nights and
'events', Jackie 60 and Mother, Click and Drag Messy, Verbal Abuse,
a poetry periodical and more. It was eclectic, gorgeous, edgy and
FUN – the talent was staggering, Tony Brown, Hattie Hathaway, Paul
Alexander, Armen Ra, Amanda Lepore , Jennifer Blowdryer, the late
Dean Johnson, Poison Eve, Sweetie, Joey Arias, Justin Bond, Antony,
the list is endless – the Motherboard, like Jon Whitney's The
Brain, is a way to retain some kind of link to those people I adore
and to see their undertakings, even if only through a modem.